On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 7:12 AM, Benjamin Peterson <benja...@python.org> wrote: > def f(a, b, c, *args, d): > pass > > a, b, and c are positional. Hence the "positional" in error messages. > > As you noted in your next message, keyword-only arguments need to be > distinguished from these "positional" arguments somehow. Maybe it > helps to think of "positional" to mean "the only formals you can pass > to with position" (excepting variadic ones).
That is how I think of "positional". However, the other wrinkle is that some arguments really are "position-only," for example: >>> len(s="abc") Traceback (most recent call last): ... TypeError: len() takes no keyword arguments I think it is a defect of our documentation that we don't have a way to distinguish between "positional" and "position-only" arguments in the function signature notation we use in our documentation, leading to issues like this one: "accept keyword arguments on most base type methods and builtins": http://bugs.python.org/issue8706 --Chris _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
